Transformation KEYS …… to do the Plan of God …… in your life
By Dave Roberson
Note: Most of the paragraphs of this document are excerpts from the book “THE WALK OF THE SPIRIT – THE WALK OF POWER” authored by Dave Roberson. They have been personalized and addressed to you.
Table of Content
Introduction.................................................................................................................... 2KEY # 1 - Prayer in Tongues ..........................................................................................2KEY # 2 - Meditation & Assimilation of the Word ........................................................ 5KEY # 3 - Private Worship ..............................................................................................9KEY # 4 - Confess the Word ........................................................................................ 11KEY # 5 - Fasting .......................................................................................................... 13Walking in Love ............................................................................................................ 17
Transformation KEYS … … to do the Plan of God in your life
Introduction
There is a place in God for each of you to experience, a place where all your failures have already been judged in Jesus! Every failure, every lack, everything you could ever possibly need, was all laid upon Jesus when He went to the Cross. The fullness of your judgment was taken out on Him so that you could walk out of God’s court of law with a verdict that says, “you are free — and all your rights are restored!”
You need to grab hold of that truth and never let it go. You are the righteousness of God in Christ! You hold the same rights as the firstborn, the Son of God Himself! As you begin to not only know this truth, but also to walk in it on a daily basis, you will see supernatural results come to pass in your lives beyond anything you have yet imagined!
So let your heart reach out for more of God. Learn to love His Presence more than you love anything else in life. Pursue the incredible reality of your right standing in God!
There is much revelation in the area of receiving from the Lord. One of the things he has taught that you can do to greatly affect your ability to receive is to walk in an abiding awareness of righteousness.
Second Corinthians 5:21 should be a reality in your lives: For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that you might be made the righteousness of God in Him.
What an unfathomable privilege to be able to say that you are the righteousness of God in Christ! The day you start living in the reality of that statement is the day you will start walking in a whole new dimension of answered prayer and supernatural demonstrations of God’s power in your lives.
We pray for you that a crystal-clear understanding of righteousness begins to take over your consciousness in order that everything becomes possible in your walk with God, that you will no longer be afraid of faults and shortcomings, and no longer step back from fear of failure when it’s time to believe for a miracle!
We pray that the TRANSFORMATION KEYS will help you to do the Plan of God in your life.
KEY # 1 - Prayer in Tongues
There is only one operation you can fulfill immediately after you are born again: the operation of diversities of tongues. The moment you receive Jesus as Savior, you can also receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit and begin to speak with other tongues, which begins your spiritual qualification for any and all of the other operations to which you may be called.
A person cannot become a mighty apostle or prophet five minutes after he/she is born again even if that is what he/she is called to be. He/she first must become qualified, trained, prepared, and seasoned by the Holy Spirit before God will separate him to the office he/she is called to.
Why did God design it that way? Why are tongues available to you instantaneously with your rebirth? Because praying in tongues has everything to do with your becoming prepared and qualified for your particular calling. And as you pray in tongues, the Holy Spirit is able to build into your heart the understanding of God’s will for your personal lives.
Sometimes people get the baptism of the Holy Ghost mixed up with the new birth. However, there is a great difference between being born again and receiving the indwelling fullness of the Holy Spirit’s Presence.
The Holy Spirit is a Person just as each of you is a person. When you were born again, you received Him in the creative process that caused you to become new creations. But you didn’t receive Him in His fullness until you were baptized in the Holy Ghost. Now He lives inside you, partnering with you in prayer, empowering your lives, and bringing revelation of the Word as you walk in obedience to God.
The Holy Spirit came into your spirit to bring you revelation knowledge of the Cross and everything that Jesus has become to you. Also, on the day you spoke with tongues, a viable, powerful working of God’s government came into operation within your spirit, designed to give you and cause you to understand what no man can give you through natural means — spiritual authority.
This spiritual power and authority is the means God gives you to overcome torment, worry, fear, and the hopelessness that can take over your lives when you move from one overwhelming situation to another, continually losing ground. Praying in other tongues also supplies the power to overcome character flaws — those deep-seated character traits that keep cropping up and robbing you of your stamina and initiative to overcome in the face of the common testings and trials that precede almost every major victory and promotion by God.
Praying in tongues always affects you in a positive way. God says that it edifies you (1 Cor. 14:4). In Jude 20, He says that it builds you up on your most holy faith. As you faithfully spend time praying in tongues, your lives begin to be transformed. The Word of God begins to come alive as you place your spirit, the “candle of the Lord” (Prov. 20:27), in the hands of the expert Illuminator.
Although many diversifications of tongues occur as the Spirit wills, four basic manifestations are outlined in the Word:
1. Tongues for personal edification (1 Cor. 14:4)
This is the supernatural language the Holy Spirit prays through you that you can use to pray hour after hour as you desire. It accompanies the baptism in the Holy Spirit.
2. Tongues for interpretation (1 Cor. 14:5)
This manifestation of tongues is normally presented in a public assembly, accompanied by interpretation by the same or another person.
3. Tongues of deep intercessional groanings (Rom. 8:26)
This diversification of tongues empowers the believers to stand in the gap for their own lives, their families, their church, their city, their nation, etc. God may also call on them to intercede for someone or for some situation that is totally unknown to them.
4. Tongues as a sign to the unbeliever (1 Cor. 14:22)
This is the phenomenon that took place on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:4-11). It occurs when the Holy Spirit transcends the intellect and all language barriers by empowering a believer to preach, teach, or testify about Christ in some language of men of which the believer himself has no knowledge.
The rules that govern the operation of tongues for personal edification are as different as night and day from the rules that govern tongues for interpretation. For that matter, the rules governing the deep intercessional groanings of the Spirit are completely different from either one of the other two manifestations of tongues. And the diversity of tongues that presents itself as a sign to the unbeliever has very different rules from the other three!
Of these four different manifestations of tongues, two are designed to be used in the individual prayer life of a believer: tongues for personal edification and tongues that extend into the deep intercessional groanings of the Holy Spirit. The other two, tongues for interpretation and tongues as a sign to the unbeliever, are normally for use in public assembly. As a believer begins to understand and yield to these four different manifestations of the diversities of tongues, it will completely transform his/her life.
Building Yourself Up On Your Most Holy Faith
So what happens when you pray in tongues for personal edification, which you can do at will, anytime you desire? Why is this, the most “foolish” of all gifts to the natural mind, so important and so powerful?
Let’s look at Jude 20 and 21 to discover more of your answer: But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of your Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.
You know that God is only pleased by and only moves in response to your faith. In Romans 10:17, Paul tells us, So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. But you also know that you can hear and hear and hear the Word and yet not see any change in your lives. You still have to get that Word planted in your spirits and then find some way to release the faith that the Word has produced.
Thousands of people around the world are filled to overflowing with God’s Word. Yet still, for the most part, the Church does not experience the miraculous results found in the Book of Acts. So there must be a missing ingredient most believers are unaware of.
The truth is, any minister, no matter how anointed and full of the Word he may be, can only tell you what he has learned through experience and as the Holy Ghost has taught him in his own times of meditation on the Word. But that teaching will not profit you if you don’t find some way to mix faith with it. You must personally get that Word into your spirit and then let the Holy Spirit teach you.
That’s why Jude says you are to build yourselves up on your most holy faith by praying always in the Holy Ghost. It is only as you willingly and freely present your bodies as a living sacrifice and take the time to endure in prayer that the Holy Ghost can begin to reveal to you the mysteries of Christ. Only then can He release the faith in your hearts that is needed for God’s power to operate in your lives.
As you spend time praying in tongues, the Holy Spirit is fast at work doing what He does best: edifying you and putting to death all the things that would hinder you from reaching your full potential. Eventually, He is able to get you to a place where He can take the emphasis off of your own edification and release His power through you on the behalf of others. This is called intercessory prayer!
It is very important to understand just how powerful intercessory prayer can be. It is just as powerful a move of the Spirit as the workings of miracles when a person suddenly jumps up out of a wheelchair and is completely made whole by the power of God. You can no more operate in the true intercessional groanings of the Spirit any time you want to any more than you can operate in the working of miracles anytime you want to. They are both a separate, distinct power flows that only operates as God wills.
When the power is delivered to you through intercessory prayer to genuinely stand in the gap, God actually places you between Hell and people trying to get there, or, He uses you to curb a catastrophe. The kind of spiritual activity that goes into operation is phenomenal. Not only does this kind of power authorize a host of angels to take legal action into your affairs to ward off, stop, and change things, but it will also attract powers and principalities to challenge your authority. They will move in on you with the power and vengeance of a freight train. Their target will be any weaknesses or character flaws that they can use to control and destroy you, such as your susceptibility to persecutions, afflictions, and ungodly lusts, or just plain procrastination.
This is why the first two things the Holy Spirit accomplishes in you are so important – edification and mortification. They are designed to isolate, build you up above, and put to death the forces of the flesh and character flaws that give the devil authority and power to hinder and control your lives. So God can bring you to the place where He can slip you over into the true intercessional groanings of the Spirit and use you - and you mean really use you - to change things in your family, church, and city.
Although you can pray in tongues for personal edification any time you want, you cannot activate the deep intercessional groanings any time you want. The edification is designed to change you, the intercessional groanings is designed to change things, and He cannot use you to change things until you have edified ourselves enough to stand against the onslaughts of Hell that can be released against any person who is really blocking the pathway of people trying to get to Hell – through intercession.
We want to encourage you in your time spent praying in tongues and in intercession. You are becoming a powerful tool which God can use to change many things for many people. Continue on the pathway of becoming a life-giving, life-changing force of God in the earth.
KEY # 2 - Meditation & Assimilation of the Word
Meditation on the Word
Meditation on God’s Word is one of the most important guidelines given to you for unlocking divine mysteries through praying in the Holy Ghost.
What is meditation? Meditation is the process of assimilating God’s Word into your soul and spirit. As you meditate on the Word of God, the Holy Spirit takes God’s counsel in the form of the Word and reconstructs it in your spirit in such a way that it becomes your insight, wisdom, and counsel.
Meditation can take you from simply acknowledging that God’s Word is true to having the Word engrafted into your spirit. In other words, the Word not only becomes a part of you, but as it becomes implanted in your heart, you become a part of it!
Meditation on the Word And Praying in Tongues
The more you pray in tongues, the more clear and definite the divine channel becomes through which God communicates with you. It is to your eternal benefit that you pray much in the Holy Ghost, building yourself up on your most holy faith.
As you pray in tongues, the Teacher (the Holly Spirit) of your new nature uses the supernatural language He brought all the way from Heaven to begin an illumination process inside of you.
Within that language resides not only the mysteries of God’s plan for your life, but the understanding of all Scripture.
Therefore, the Holy Spirit lives in hope of the day that you’ll give yourself over to the meditation of God’s Word. When you do, you make His ministry of illumination so much simpler. Consider it to be a blessing that your mind is unfruitful while you spend three or four hours praying in tongues. Why? Because you have learned to employ your mind with God’s Word while your spirit is praying.
A favorite practice is to take a book like Galatians, Ephesians, or Philippians and just read that book over and over again while you pray in tongues for hours. Often you sit in a chair or lie on the floor and pray an hour or two. Then you set your open Bible in a convenient place and start walking around the room praying.
You pray for a while, your spirit listening in case the Holy Spirit says something through that channel of communication. Then you go back to the Bible and read the entire book through again, still praying in tongues.
Be glad that your mind and your spirit can receive from God at the same time. The Holy Spirit takes all the accumulated knowledge that you have deposited into your mind through reading something in the Bible over and over, and He uses it for the day-and-night meditation process.
This is where much of the revelation knowledge you receive originates.
Confession: The Highest Form of Meditation
God created you with a capacity not only to believe, but to conform to whatever it is that you are believing and continually subjecting ourselves to. Unfortunately, this ability can operate in you for the bad as well as for the good.
That’s why God gave Joshua this instruction when Joshua was about to lead the children of Israel into the Promised Land: This book of the law SHALL NOT DEPART OUT OF THY MOUTH; but thou shalt MEDITATE THEREIN DAY AND NIGHT, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. Joshua 1:8
What an incredible set of instructions! First of all, God said, “Don’t let the Word of God depart out of your mouth.” That means there should never be a time when the Word in your mouth is replaced by anything else. When you let the Word depart from your mouth, you set yourself in agreement with the circumstances that are arrayed against you.
But if you continue to confess the Word, you are operating in the covenant between you and God against the adverse circumstance. And as you continually subject yourself to the Word by confessing it over and over, you are applying one of the highest forms of meditation.
Circumstances are no respecters of persons. They will come at you day and night. But when you stand face to face with those situations that seem impossible to overcome and keep confessing God’s promises over and over, you are meditating day and night. Through meditation, you are giving the Word of God the opportunity to transform you and your thinking so you can actually become that victorious person you are meant to be.
You will eventually conform to what you continually subject yourself to. That’s why God told Joshua to let not the Word depart from his mouth and to meditate day and night; He wanted Joshua to continually be subjected to the Word.
Paint a Picture of Your Answer
Due to your busy schedules, most of you cannot read, study, or memorize the Word day and night. But you can meditate on the Word day and night. Reading, studying, and memorizing can only assist meditation; they do not replace it.
You can actually take a journey into a whole new set of circumstances in your spirit and mind as you meditate day and night on what God has said about you and your problem. Soon you won’t be conforming to the problem anymore. Instead, your faith, your thoughts, and your attitude will leave the problem behind to embark on a journey into God where every promise is yea and Amen (2 Cor. 1:20).
You can find a place in God where your mouth has described the victory so many times that it has painted a picture on the inside of your spirit. That picture of victory becomes so powerful; it replaces anything and everything that spells defeat.
So whenever you face a problem or are about to charge ahead to conquer something for the Kingdom of God, start hearing and reading scriptures that address your particular problem. Keep on doing that until there is a huge reservoir of the Word on the inside of you.
Then meditate on those scriptures day and night, saying them over and over. Roll them over and over in your mind until the picture the Word paints in your heart becomes stronger than the picture the obstacle paints in your mind.
Pull the Word up out of your spirit and roll it over and over in your mind while you are driving, cleaning house, or working on your job. Whenever you can, describe your victory out loud. Use your words to paint pictures of your victory. Then God will do for you what He promised Joshua: “For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.”
The Role of Meditation In Overcoming Failures
In his Book “THE WALK OF THE SPIRIT – THE WALK OF POWER”, Pastor Dave Roberson gives the following testimony: I CAN ATTEST TO THE TRUTH OF THIS VITAL PRINCIPLE FROM MY OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. FOR EXAMPLE, I WILL NEVER FORGET THE FIRST TIME I TRIED TO PREACH. IT WAS A WEDNESDAY NIGHT SERVICE IN A SMALL HOLINESS CHURCH IN OREGON. BESIDES MY WIFE ROSALIE, THERE WERE ONLY THREE OR FOUR PEOPLE PRESENT.I WAS SURE I COULD DO IT. MANY TIMES THOSE SAME FOUR PEOPLE HAD SAT WITH MY WIFE AND ME IN COFFEE SHOPS, TALKING ABOUT JESUS. I WOULD GET SO CARRIED AWAY PREACHING AND POUNDING ON THE TABLE THAT I’D ALMOST SPILL MY COFFEE!BUT NOW AS I STOOD UP IN CHURCH IN FRONT OF THOSE SAME FOUR PEOPLE TO DELIVER THE WORD IN AN OFFICIAL CAPACITY, SOMETHING HAPPENED! I GUESS IT WAS THE FEAR OF BEING PUT IN A POSITION WHERE I FELT AS IF I HAD TO PRODUCE.EVEN IN HIGH SCHOOL, I’D CHOOSE TO TAKE A LOWER GRADE IN ENGLISH RATHER THAN TO GIVE AN ORAL REPORT. THE BLOOD WOULD DRAIN OUT OF MY FACE; I’D TURN WHITE AND GET DIZZY JUST AT THE THOUGHT OF DOING IT.YET HERE I WAS, STANDING BEHIND A PULPIT WITH AN ENTIRE PAGE FULL OF NOTES AND EVERYONE LOOKING AT ME. ROSALIE SAID I TURNED WHITE AS I STOOD THERE, TRYING TO GATHER MY COURAGE TO BEGIN. THEN THE DOOR SUDDENLY OPENED, AND THREE MORE PEOPLE CAME IN AND SAT DOWN. THAT DID IT! THEY WERE PERFECT STRANGERS!I ALMOST PASSED OUT AS I LEANED FORWARD, GRIPPING THE PULPIT FOR SUPPORT. I CAN STILL REMEMBER WATCHING MY KNUCKLES TURN WHITE AS I STARED DOWN AT THEM. I WAS AFRAID TO LOOK AT THE PEOPLE.FINALLY, I PULLED MYSELF TOGETHER ENOUGH TO READ MY TEXT — BUT THEN MY MIND WENT COMPLETELY BLANK! EARLIER THAT DAY I HAD THOUGHT OF A HUNDRED THINGS TO SAY, BUT MY MENTAL “SLATE” HAD BEEN WIPED CLEAN BY PANIC.SO, AS AN EMERGENCY MEASURE, I PICKED UP MY NOTES AND BEGAN TO READ. BUT THE SITUATION ONLY GREW WORSE. BY THE TIME I HAD FINISHED READING MY NOTES, I HAD ABSOLUTELY NOTHING LEFT TO SAY. I WAS PARALYZED WITH FEAR!I LOOKED SHEEPISHLY TOWARD MY PASTOR FOR HELP, SO SHE WALKED UP TO THE PULPIT TO RESCUE ME. I HURT SO BAD INSIDE I WANTED TO CRY. IT WAS A LONG WALK BACK TO MY CHAIR. I SAT DOWN JUST IN TIME TO HEAR THE PASTOR APOLOGIZE TO THE PEOPLE, SAYING, “I’M SORRY, FOLKS. HE TOLD ME HE WAS CALLED TO PREACH...”THE ENTIRE ORDEAL HAD LASTED ABOUT SEVEN MINUTES. THAT NIGHT I BURIED MY FACE IN MY PILLOW AND CRIED UNTIL SOME OF THE HURT WAS GONE. IT WAS A LONG TIME BEFORE I STOOD BEHIND A PULPIT TO PREACH AGAIN — ALMOST TWO YEARS!IT SEEMED AS THOUGH THAT NIGHT HAD CONFIRMED EVERYTHING I HAD ALREADY KNOWN. I JUST DIDN’T HAVE WHAT IT TOOK TO BE A PREACHER. MY GRANDPA’S WORDS RANG IN MY EARS: “YOU’RE NEVER GOING TO AMOUNT TO ANYTHING!”AFTER BEING DEVASTATED BY MY FIRST ATTEMPT AT PREACHING, I KNEW THERE WAS A MOUNTAIN OF BAD PROGRAMMING AND POOR IMAGES TO OVERCOME. BUT, GLORY TO GOD, IN THE MONTHS THAT FOLLOWED, SOMETHING HAPPENED TO BREAK THAT DEADLY PATTERN. I LEARNED ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF MEDITATING ON GOD’S WORD!TWO YEARS LATER, I SUMMONED THE COURAGE TO MAKE MY SECOND ATTEMPT AT PREACHING. BUT SOMETHING WAS VERY DIFFERENT THIS TIME. EVEN THOUGH I HADN’T PHYSICALLY STOOD BEFORE A CROWD FOR ANY REASON FOR THOSE TWO YEARS, THROUGH MEDITATION I HAD STOOD BEFORE CROWDS AND PREACHED HUNDREDS OF TIMES. I WOULD CLOSE MY EYES AND SEE MYSELF PREACHING. I COULD EVEN HEAR MYSELF PREACH THE MESSAGE OVER AND OVER AGAIN IN MY SPIRIT. I WAS PAINTING A PICTURE OF VICTORY ON THE INSIDE OF ME.I SEE, I MEDITATED ON VERSES THAT DESCRIBED THE IMAGE OF TRUTH THAT I NEEDED TO CONFORM TO — VERSES SUCH AS I CAN DO ALL THINGS THROUGH CHRIST WHICH STRENGTHENETH ME (PHIL. 4:13)AND ...GREATER IS HE THAT IS IN YOU, THAN HE THAT IS IN THE WORLD (1 JOHN 4:4). I KEPT MEDITATING ON THOSE VERSES UNTIL THEY ACTUALLY CHANGED THE WAY I SAW MYSELF!IT WAS INCREDIBLE. WHEN THE MOMENT CAME, IT WAS AS THOUGH I HAD PREACHED HUNDREDS OF TIMES. I WAS AMAZED AT HOW EASY IT WAS TO CONFORM TO THE IMAGE THAT HAD BEEN CREATED IN MY SPIRIT THROUGH MEDITATION.THAT’S WHAT MAKES MEDITATION SO POWERFUL: IT REPLACES THE PROBLEM WITH THE WORD AND THE FEAR OF FAILURE WITH FAITH IN EVERY AREA OF MY LIFE.
Assimilating the Word Into the Soul
Your soul was created to assimilate. For example, if you moved to a country where people spoke a language you didn’t know, you would begin to assimilate that language just by being in constant contact with its use. Your entire soul would kick in to cause you to learn that language automatically. You wouldn’t have to deliberately sit down with a tape that told you to say “Thank you” or “How are you” in that language over and over until you finally memorized it.
In the same way, you can approach God’s Word in such a manner that your soul — your intellect, will, and emotions — automatically assimilates it and then begins the process of transforming you according to its truth.
For example, some men who are called to helps asked what books of the Bible they should meditate on in order to excel in their particular calling. As businessmen, one of their main concerns was that they could learn to possess money without money possessing them.
The answer was, “Take the Book of Proverbs and read it fifty times. Read it deliberately and precisely, acknowledging what is in each verse. You may not understand what the verse means, but at least understand what it says.
“If you run across a word you don’t know, look it up in a dictionary so that the next time you see it, you’ll know what it means. But don’t do any studies or cross referencing. Just read the Book of Proverbs fifty times.”
Why instruct those men to do that? Because by the time they read Proverbs at least fifty times, they would have assimilated the entire book into their soul!
Perhaps there are three verses — one in chapter 2, one in chapter 5, and one in chapter 9 — that will give them understanding of a verse in chapter 14. But it won’t come together for them until they’ve read the book fifty times and assimilated it into their soul.
You see, when you read a book of the Bible over and over, you set yourself up for day-and-night meditation. You are feeding your spirit the raw material that the Holy Ghost needs to illuminate the entire book for you! Eventually the central theme will be born in you. Then all satellite verses will be pulled in, along with the understanding of how they relate to each other.
Understanding how verses relate to one another in a passage of Scripture is an important part of the meditation process. One of the first things the Lord taught regarding meditation was never to take a verse out of context.
If there is a verse you try to understand, the Holy Spirit alerts you to find where the subject of the verse begins and ends and then to read over that passage many times. In this way, you assist Him in your meditations.
The assimilation process will happen automatically, even when you go to sleep. For instance, suppose you read First John one hundred times. (By the way, that’s a good beginning assignment for offering your soul for meditation. Anything in you that doesn’t love people will go to war against that book!) Then suppose that soon afterward, someone wronged you in some way, and you made a mountain of unforgiveness out of a molehill of offense.
The mind of God that you assimilated from First John will help you sort out what is and what is not important while you sleep. It will magnify the truth you assimilated regarding God’s love and level that mountain of unforgiveness.
KEY # 3 - Private Worship
Your journey into answered prayer takes you to the limb of private worship. Why is it so important to spend time fellowshipping with God through worship?
One thing you have to understand is that everything Jesus has provided, Heaven has made available to us. You can’t talk God into doing anything for you, nor is He holding back anything from you. The apostle John said: Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that you should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth you not, because it knew him not.
Beloved, now are you the sons of God…
First John 3:1-2
In the sonship that you have, there is a fellowship that God wants to enter into with you based on the new nature, and it’s in that nature where the divine flow takes place – between His Spirit and yours.
Thank God for worship teams that lead you in songs that provide words and a tempo and melody, but if you aren’t careful, your minds tend to drift off and you end up just giving Him lip service. However, when you collect everything about you and pour your all into every sung lyric of adoration and every uttered phrase of adoration, it won’t be very long till He comes with everything He is. That’s the kind of heart presence He loves to come in. And when He starts coming, everything He is comes with Him. Workings of miracles, gifts of healings…and yes… answered prayer.
A lot of prayers go unanswered because, in many areas of your lives, you still have a problem believing that God wants to, or will answer them. Worship can change that because you cannot subject yourselves to His presence without being changed. Look at the entire second verse in First John 3: Beloved, now are you the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what you shall be: but you know that, when he shall appear, you shall be like him; for you shall see him as he is.
You don’t have to wait till Jesus comes again to behold Him and become like Him. You can come to Him in worship and praise. James said that, if you would draw near to God, He would draw near to you (James 4:8). What better way to draw near than through worship?
We encourage you again to set aside time to spend worshipping God privately. You will find it to be one of the most valuable keys to being changed and receiving answers to prayer. Never stop praying in tongues, because there are so many advantages to this kind of prayer, but add to it worship, and you will find your life changing in ways you never thought possible.
The more you speak to yourselves and sing and make melody in your hearts as Ephesians 5:19 and 20 says, the more the Holy Spirit gets involved with your senses and brings them under subjection to His Word until you know what it means to be filled with the Spirit.
The purpose for this filling is to receive God's direction and His peace. For, as you walk in peace, the enemy's line of infiltration into your soul realm is cut off. Satan no longer has the ability to cause you to run to and fro in confusion. As you continue walking in the Spirit, which produces this anesthetizing peace, the Word of God that you have made spiritual songs from, begins taking root and soon it brings forth faith. Faith then brings forth the corresponding substance, the answer to your need!
Ephesians 5: 18 says, And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit. By this comparison, you know that being filled with the Spirit can actually have a similar calming effect on your senses as being drunk on wine. Worshipping God and confessing what He says about a problem moves your soul into a position to receive what He has already done about your problem.
Let's just say that finances are the problem and you have done everything the Word said to do. You should take about an hour a day to minister to your own soul in this area by taking these two steps: Find at least two verses that describe the victory over your problem. Here are two good ones for finances: 2 Corinthians 8:9 which says, For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for our sakes, He became poor that ye through His poverty might be rich. And 2 Corinthians 9:8 which says: And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye always having all sufficiency in all things may abound to every good work.
Then, you enter into your private place of worship (just God and you) and lift your face towards Heaven. You first enter into His Presence by telling Him how much you love Him. Then, you minister to your emotions and senses by confessing the Word over and over in worship, ministering to ourselves in hymns and spiritual songs you have made from these two verses.
You see, after spending an hour in this kind of worship, the Holy Spirit will have stabilized your senses and emotions and moved your soul into a place of peace where you can receive from God.
KEY # 4 - Confess the Word
Spend time with the Lord reconciling the problem you are currently facing to the Cross. How? By replacing with the words of your mouth the image of the problem that the devil sends your way with the image that is in the Word. That is your inheritance and your right as a believer.
Say, “Father, I thank you that devils are subject to me. I thank you that disease, which is caused directly or indirectly by devils, is subject to me in Your Name. I thank you that I have been delivered from poverty and that it is also subject to me in Your Name. I thank you for all these things, Father.
“Now if you will excuse me, Father, the devil is invading my territory. So I’m going to use the faith and the Word you have given me to meet that invasion head-on with the power of confession.
“You said that if I do not doubt Your Word with my heart and if I confess it with my mouth, the same incredible power that wrought the most phenomenal miracle of all, the rebirth, will also operate to remove my mountain.” So you would spend the next hour hurling the confession of God’s Word directly at your problem. You will talk to that mountain in your life the same way Jesus talked to the fig tree in Mark 11:14.
For example, if you are dealing with financial lack, you will confess something like this over and over: “Poverty, you have been reconciled to the Cross. Jesus Himself has borne my poverty by an act of grace. Though He was rich, for my sake He became poor that I through His poverty might be made rich [2 Cor. 8:9].”
Do you hear me, poverty? You have a covenant with God. You cannot stay in my life. You are cursed. You are leaving my life!
“And, prosperity, I call you in from the north, the south, the east, and the west! Finances, I command you to increase! I am enforcing my rights as a believer by a gift God has given me — the confession of faith in His Word!” That’s how you would talk to that mountain of poverty, cursing it and commanding it to move out of your life.
Now, someone may say, “I can understand worshiping God for an hour, but isn’t confessing the same thing over and over to your problem a form of begging?” No, it isn’t. You are begging God when you ask Him again and again for something He has already provided, such as healing or deliverance from an addiction that has kept you in bondage.
Confessing the Word of God is using the faith God has already put in your heart to enforce what He has already said about your problem. Once you have prayed the prayer of faith over the problem, you are not to talk to God about the problem — you are to talk to the problem about God!
You know that confession of God’s Word can affect your hope and eventually your faith to receive answers to your prayers. But it’s important not to forget the Holy Spirit’s role in all of this. One of His most difficult tasks is to get you across that line to where your emotions and physical senses are finally willing to accept the Word of God as the final say so.
Basically, the Holy Spirit has to get you to where both your emotions and your senses are willing to subject themselves to the Word of God for training. You must reach the place where your emotions are more stimulated by the Word than they are by the circumstances, and your senses are willing to believe the Word of God even in the absence of physical evidence. These two things are usually required to substantiate the presence of answered prayer.
The breakdown occurs when the devil deceives you into never coming to the place of believing the Word of God enough to subject your emotions and senses to it for training. You must respect the Word of God enough to realize that it really is your answer.
If you cannot seem to receive what God has promised, your first real steps into faith would be to acknowledge that you are not receiving and, even with that knowledge, to still be willing to subject your senses and emotions to His Word until you can receive.
There is a subtle kind of unbelief that sometimes creeps in. It would have you believe that the Word of God is true all right, but hindered by this unbelief, you never quite make the transition to where your confidence in the Word outweighs your confidence in the circumstance.
Another roadblock you sometimes face is not understanding the Word of God enough to realize that, if it is not working in your lives, you need to respect it enough as truth to subject your senses and emotions to it for training until it does. It’s almost like a school; you need to enroll two students – your emotions and your senses – in the class of the Holy Spirit until they come under His training enough to accept the Word of God as the answer to your problems.
Often times when you hear someone say how they “confess God’s Word,” it is easy to let that statement go in one ear and out the other. You rarely stop to consider the profound effect it can have on your ability to receive from God.
However, if you were to stop and really look into it, you will find that the part confession plays is this: eventually, it replaces the image of worry and defeat that the enemy has created with an image of success and answered prayer constructed by God's Word. When this happens, the image constructed by God's Word becomes the kind of hope Hebrews 11:1 was talking about when Paul said: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."
In other words, that image becomes the kind of hope that is based on God's Word and the kind of hope that faith can put substance to. It is not your confession that moves God. Rather, it moves you into a place to receive from God by causing you to cross the line from hope to faith and, when that transition is made, the result is automatic: God will come on the scene in response to your faith with grace for your situation and meet your needs according to His riches in glory!
There is something wonderful about the way God created the human soul. You will eventually believe what you willfully subject yourselves to, if you subject ourselves to it long enough. One of the most effective ways of subjecting ourselves to the Word of God is by limiting your mind, your will, and your intellect to only what the Word says about your finances or problems, and by speaking only the words that agree with what Jesus has promised you.
KEY # 5 - Fasting
What Jesus Taught About Fasting
In Matthew 17, you find an account that reveals what Jesus taught His disciples about fasting. Jesus climbed up what is called the Mount of Transfiguration with James, Peter, and John.
There, Jesus had a visitation of God. Afterwards, He charged the three disciples who were with Him to tell no man what they had seen; then they came back down the mountain.
Meanwhile, the other disciples were trying to cast a devil out of a man’s son at the foot of the mountain. The disciples had cast devils out before this with no problem, but now they had run into one that just wouldn’t come out of the person. While they were making their unsuccessful attempts, a crowd had collected around them.
The disciples were probably feeling frustrated, flustered, and embarrassed. This is the situation that Jesus, James, Peter, and John walked into when they came down off the mountain. And when they were come to the multitude, there came to him [Jesus] a certain man, kneeling down to him, and saying, Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is lunatic, and sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water.
And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him. Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall you be with you? How long shall you suffer you? Bring him hither to me. And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him: and the child was cured from that very hour.
Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not you cast him out? And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily you say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you. HOWBEIT THIS KIND GOETH NOT OUT BUT BY PRAYER AND FASTING. Matthew 17:14-21
So this man came to Jesus and said, “Lord Jesus, please have mercy on my son. He’s crazy — out of his mind — and often a spirit throws him into the fire. I brought him to Your disciples, but they couldn’t cast this devil out.”
Notice how Jesus answered the disciples: “you faithless and perverse generation, how long shall you suffer you?” In other words, “How long am I going to have to do this for you?” Jesus wouldn’t have said that if He hadn’t expected His disciples to cast that devil out.
Jesus rebuked the devil, and it departed out of the boy. Then the disciples did the same thing you would have done. They came to Jesus privately and said, “Why couldn’t we cast that devil out?” (You definitely wouldn’t have yelled that question over the heads of the crowd, because Jesus would have probably yelled the answer back to you: “Because of your unbelief!”)
Notice again Jesus’ answer to them in verse 20: And Jesus said unto them, BECAUSE OF YOUR UNBELIEF: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and NOTHING SHALL BE IMPOSSIBLE UNTO YOU.
Jesus said the reason that devil wouldn’t come out of the boy was the disciples’ unbelief. He went on to say that if they ever learned to deal with that unbelief, they would be able to say to a mountain, “Be removed!” and it would obey them. Finally, Jesus said something absolutely incredible: “Nothing shall be impossible to you.”
So Jesus was saying that if you ever learn to deal with that particular kind of unbelief, you have a promise from Him that absolutely nothing will be impossible to you. When you realized that truth, you wanted to know what kind of unbelief Jesus was talking about here so you could isolate it and deal with it!
A Subtle Kind of Unbelief
What kind of unbelief Jesus was referring to. It is a subtle kind of unbelief a person may not even know he has until his life is over. If the disciples knew why they couldn’t cast the devil out, why would they have bothered to ask Jesus? They didn’t know, so they asked Him.
This subtle unbelief puts a ceiling on your life that defies you to pull yourself out of the mess your life is in or to accomplish the thing God wants you to accomplish. As long as that ceiling is there, one year will be like the next, until one day you’ll realize five years have passed, and your anointing hasn’t changed; in fact, nothing has changed. You’re just the same now as you were five years ago.
Why? Because you keep operating under an invisible ceiling that hangs over your life, and you don’t even know it’s there. And even if you did know, you couldn’t break through that ceiling in your own strength.
Fasting Helps Move Mountains
The answer lay in what Jesus told His disciples in Matthew 17; you find that answer in verse 21: Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.
Jesus analyzed the whole situation in one word: “howbeit.” “Howbeit” is an analytical word meaning nevertheless or however this particular situation may be. Jesus was in effect saying that even though mountains can be moved with faith the size of a tiny mustard seed, you will encounter some situations that require prayer and fasting to overcome.
Jesus was talking about a lifestyle of prayer and fasting here. Most deliverance preachers in the old days taught about and encouraged that kind of lifestyle. Today preachers don’t teach or emphasize its importance nearly as much. The result? Although you live in a time of Church history when teaching the Word has risen to the forefront, many are unequipped to do the Word, which includes casting out demons and moving mountains of all kinds.
Often we associate fasting only with deliverance from demonic influence because of Jesus’ statement here that a certain kind of demon can be cast out only by prayer and fasting. But Jesus also told His disciples that the reason this devil wouldn’t come out was their own unbelief (v. 20).
So Jesus didn’t just associate fasting with demonic deliverance; He also associated it with moving your mountain. He said, “If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, you could speak to the mountain and it would be removed, and absolutely nothing would be impossible to you.”
Right after saying that, Jesus made the statement about prayer and fasting. This indicates that these two things have something to do with bringing you from a place of unbelief — where your mountains refuse to move, where everything is impossible — to a place where nothing is impossible to you.
Therefore, your fasting doesn’t move God; He isn’t the One stuck underneath an invisible ceiling. Your fasting also doesn’t move the devil; he isn’t the one with your problem. Somehow fasting deals with your unbelief.
But your question to God for so many years was this: “What in the world does fasting have to do with unbelief?” Of all the places to find that answer, you found it back in Romans 8: And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. Romans 8:10
If Christ lives in you, you qualify for the rest of this verse, namely, that your spirit is life. It has entered into the zoe, seated-in-heavenly-places-with-Christ, God-kind of life.
But notice, the same verse that says your spirit is life also declares your body to be dead. Well, you know your body isn’t physically dead because you are still wearing it. So what kind of “dead” is Paul referring to? To understand this passage in Romans 8, you must refer back to something Paul said in Romans 6:6: Knowing this, that your old man is crucified with him, that the BODY OF SIN might be destroyed, that henceforth you should not serve sin.
What is this “body of sin”? It is no less than the old nature inherited from the first man Adam before you were born again. This is the “sin nature,” the unregenerated spirit within you all before your spirit passes from death to life in the new birth. It was that sin nature that used to energize the lusts of the flesh, such as self-exaltation and the love of money.
So if Christ be in you, then positionally God has declared the sin nature, the “body of sin,” to be dead and your reborn human spirit alive unto Him.
You understand positional truth pertaining to your spirit. For instance, we know that Jesus was made to be sin for you and that you were made the righteousness of God in Christ (2 Cor. 5:21).
We are now seated in heavenly places with Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:6). We are above and not beneath (Deut. 28:13). However, you may know very little about positional truth pertaining to your flesh. The essence of that truth is this: The moment you were born again, God declared the “body of sin” — the sin nature or the “old man” — to be dead. Positionally, the flesh has lost its “power source” to commit sin. It lost its right to dominate and rule over you any longer.
So when you pray in the Holy Ghost, worship God, and confess His Word, you are enforcing the positional truth that your spirit is seated in heavenly places with Christ Jesus. The more you pray in the Holy Ghost, the more you execute that position of grace. On the other hand, when you fast, you are enforcing the positional truth that the “body of sin” was crucified with Christ and your flesh no longer has the power to rule over the operation of your spirit.
Thus, when you begin to fast and pray, you execute two positional truths in the realm of the Spirit. That’s why prayer and fasting are the power twins.
Breaking Down the Ceiling of Flesh
Sometimes it’s not only that subtle kind of unbelief, but the flesh that constructs a ceiling over your lives. The devil will erect some kind of stronghold in your flesh realm, such as smoking, drinking, anger, gossip, or lust. Then he uses that stronghold to control you. Every time you attempt to receive from God or to accomplish something for Him, he turns up the pressure in those areas so that you feel hopeless and out of control.
So what do you often do? You pray superficial prayers; you go to church; you try to minister; you implement programs; you substitute many things for the power of God that is absent because of the ceiling of flesh over your lives. But your lives stay the same all the time, never increasing.
You may instigate more programs, but the power never changes. Your lives keep bouncing off that ceiling of flesh.
Then one day, you decide to fast and pray. You begin by praying in the Holy Ghost and worshiping God. Then as your spirit begins to be built up, you start to fast. As you add fasting to your prayer lives, you slam the door on Satan’s accessibility to the control center on your lives.
Pretty soon the ceiling of the flesh over your lives begins to drop down. It isn’t long before the operation of the flesh is at the same level as the operation of the Spirit in your lives, so you continue to fast and pray.
Finally, the operation of the flesh drops below the operation of the Spirit; its power is broken. When that happens, answered prayer is the automatic result, and the things you’ve been believing for begin to come to pass. You start seeing answers to prayers that have been lying dormant for years — even prayers that you forgot but God didn’t.
At this point, if the devil comes to inspect that computer-like program he implanted in your soul to destroy you, he will find it gone — and God’s program in its place! Why? Because through fasting, you have enforced the positional truth that your “old man” was crucified with Christ. The flesh is rendered powerless to force you into sin. You have released the operation of the Spirit.
Fasting Doesn’t Move God
But you make a mistake if you think that you move God with your fasting. How can you move someone who has so expressed His willingness to move on your behalf? Romans 8:32 makes it crystal clear: He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for you all, how shall he not with him also freely give you all things?
Your fasting doesn’t move God; it moves you to a place where you can receive from God. Fasting destroys the hold that the flesh has had on your lives so that, instead of operating out of the flesh, you can continually operate out of the Spirit!
You see, God isn’t the One holding the power back. If He had His way, every one of you would be operating in raising-the-dead type of power tomorrow!
The Fast God Chooses
To understand the kind of fast God chooses, let’s take this subject one step further and go to Isaiah 58. Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?
Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou HIDE NOT THYSELF FROM THINE OWN FLESH? Isaiah 58:6,7
What do you mean Lord when you say the fast you have chosen is that you hide not yourself from your own flesh? Was God talking about the same thing Jesus spoke of in Matthew 6:17,18: But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face; That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.
Or was God making the same point in Isaiah 58:7 as Paul made in First Corinthians 7:5 when he addressed husbands and wives?
Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.
Jesus taught about a fast in which you are to wash your faces and go about your daily business, not appearing unto men that you are fasting. Then Paul taught about a fast in which you could lock ourselves away on the “mountain,” so to speak, giving ourselves completely to fasting and prayer. Both types of fast are taught in the Bible.
But you still wondered what the Lord meant when He said you are not to hide yourself from your own flesh. The day you decide to fast is the day you decide to quit hiding from your own flesh — from whatever it is in you that just doesn’t care about the lost, the poor, the naked, or those who are cast out of God’s house. It’s the day you decide to quit hiding from whatever ceiling is in your life stopping you from operating in God’s power. The day you decide to fast is the day you decide to quit running from yourself.
Jesus said, “That demon didn’t come out because of your unbelief.” He also said, “That kind only comes out by prayer and fasting.” And what does fasting have to do with your unbelief?
It executes the position of the flesh that God has declared: It has no right to dominate you. It has no right to rule over you.
When you live a lifestyle of fasting and prayer, there is no operation of the flesh that the devil can lay hold of to destroy your life with. This is what Jesus meant when He said, “The prince of this world comes, and he has nothing in me” (John 14:30).
Why is that? Because fasting and praying in the Holy Ghost destroys those fleshly works and releases God’s power in you. And the moment the operation of the flesh drops below the level of the operation of the Spirit, you receive a new anointing in your life and ministry.
Walking in Love
In the book of Romans, Paul described the extent the Father was willing to go in demonstrating His love for you: He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for you all, how shall he not with him also freely give you all things? (Chapter 8, v. 32).
God refused to spare His own Son for you. It wouldn’t matter if you were Hitler; the Father still would have said to Jesus, “You will have to go for the gauntlet, Son, for all of this person’s sin must be laid on you. You will not be spared anything. All of his sins and atrocities, all of it will be laid on You. I cannot spare You, Son, because You will not spare anything in provision for Your people.”
That’s why Paul said, … How shall he not with him also freely give you all things? Paul isn’t arguing about the reasons God will freely give you all things. Paul wants you to try to come up with even one reason why God wouldn’t do it!
Let’s take a moment to examine the love of God. First, it is important to understand that love is a Person. Love is God Himself manifesting His character through a person’s life. Love isn’t something that originates with us; it is the result of walking in union with God and having an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ.
When you pray for others, you are actually allowing the love of God to be expressed through you. Many times in intercession, what happens is, you take other people’s cares and stand between God’s answer for them and all the fury that hell is throwing at them.
God doesn’t expect you to do this in your own strength; however, He does expect you to come to him and receive his strength. He not only gives you His strength, He becomes your strength! His love is a hiding place, a shelter from the storm, a high tower that protects you from the enemy. As you pray for others, remember that you are dear to God and that His love is providing a place of strength and comfort for you.
One of the most important keys to a walk of obedience: it is to walk in the love of God on a daily basis, for it has everything to do with living a life of answered prayer and victory in every realm.
There is something about walking in love that is stronger than you understand. When you were lost and undone on the other side of spiritual death, God sent Jesus across that void with no guarantee that you would accept His Son’s sacrifice and be saved, yet the Father sent Jesus anyway. It is difficult to understand that kind of love — the mercy that caused Jesus to die for us, the grace that brought you into His family as though nothing ever happened.
As difficult as it is for you to understand the nature of divine love, you need to realize that same love has been shed abroad in your hearts (Romans 5:5). This is why your ability to hurt another believer through bitterness and unforgiveness is a violation of the very grace by which you were born again. This is also why God is so hard on unforgiveness. You didn’t deserve mercy, yet Jesus died for us. So God isn’t at all happy when you turn around and hold bitterness in your hearts toward those who have hurt or offended you.
As you come to understand more and more about God’s love, you see the importance of Jesus’ words to the young lawyer in Matthew 22:37-40.
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
So with the same love that you love God, you are to love your neighbor. You might say, “Well, I love God, but you don’t know if I love my neighbor.” But that is impossible, because we’re talking about the same kind of love — the divine love that God has already shed abroad in your hearts!
As you continue in your fellowship with God and yield your life to Him, we encourage you to continue in the love of God. We pray for you as the Apostle Paul did for the believers at Ephesus, that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints, what is the breadth, and length, and depth and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:17- 9).
No comments:
Post a Comment